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Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Women in World War II: Their Role in Code Breaking

Hello,
Friends!

With Women’s
History Month upon us, it would be a shame if we didn’t talk about the role of
women in World War II. While a lot of people know about Rosie the Riveter and
the push for women to work in the factories during the war, not as many
recognize the role of women in other vital areas on the warfront, especially
through intelligence gathering. Here’s a blog on the women who helped shorten
the war through codebreaking by Ches.

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Many believe
that the role of women during World War Two was limited to work at home in the
factories and abroad in clerical tasks. However, this doesn’t fully encompass
what women did during the war. They weren’t just holding down the homefront
ensuring that the economy would still function while their men were at war. They
also weren’t just secretaries or nurses acting as support staff for the
soldiers. Some women actually served critical roles in the code-breaking
offices of the Allied nations.

It was through the work at Bletchley Park that the Allies crackedthe German's enigma code and helped hasten the end of the war.Pictured is a plug board of an enigma machine.

From the breaking of the Enigma code to helping start the age of
modern computing, women were vital in the code-breaking process. In the British
code-breaking headquarters at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, England, many
women not only served as clerical support staff, but also assisted their male
counterparts in actively fighting the Germans and Japanese by seeking to crack
their cyphers. The women in this organization joined a military auxiliary
branch, similar to the WAVES of the United States, called the Women’s Royal
Naval Service, or the WRNs (called the Wrens by the British). These Wrens
worked tirelessly to shorten the war for their Allies and countrymen. Certain
historians estimate that of the more than 10,000 people working at Bletchley
Park, two-thirds of them were women. Despite their often tedious tasks and
monotonous work, these women were the keys to breaking the German and Japanese
codes.

During the
1940s, British culture still dictated that men and women could not work in
exceptionally close proximity—like they would need to be in order to crack the
codes. As such, women were housed in separate bunkhouses and worked in separate
rooms and buildings, although they had male supervisors. For many women at
Bletchley Park, the work was tedious with 12 hour shifts listening to a radio
operator transmit Morse code messages back and forth. They were each assigned
certain operators and came to “know” their enemy counterpart very well.

Poster from the hit movie, "The ImitationGame," based on Alan Turing and theenigma machine

These women
were chosen through often unconventional methods to crack the codes. One method
was to send out a crossword puzzle to the local newspapers. People who solved
it within a certain time were asked to report to an office where they swore an
oath of secrecy before being told what they were about to do. After being
trained in cyphers and codes and sent to Bletchley Park, women who were able to
pass a test were given encrypted transmissions from the Japanese and German
radio operators and asked to decrypt them.

There are a
few exceptionally successful women from this group. These women worked with
Alan Turing on the Enigma machine that some scholars estimate shortened the war
by over two years. One of these women, Joan Clark, was featured in the recent
Hollywood hit, “The Imitation Game,” as she was briefly Turing’s fiancée.
Margaret Rock, Mavis Levey, and Ruth Briggs also worked with Clark in the
cyphers office. These women were in a sense the predecessors to the modern
computer assisting the men who designed the Enigma machine and the Colossus
machine, one of the world’s first electronic computers.

The Wrens
and civilian codebreakers are often overlooked because of their vow of silence,
which was enforced for decades. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that the
British government declassified all of its code-breaking files from the Second
World War and their achievements could be known—including the involvement of
women.

Recently discovered picture of Wrens at Bletchley Park

More women
continue to step forward as the veil of secrecy has been lifted from their
past. Recently, a secret, forgotten photograph hidden away in a dresser drawer was
discovered of Wrens at Bletchley Park.These Wrens worked on the Colossus C
watch at Bletchley Park, as well as working the Bombe machines, both of which
took up entire rooms.Even though their names are not commonly known and their
stories even less so, it is vital that we as students of the past remember them
and their service- both to their own country and to the Allies as a whole.

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The National D-Day Memorialis run by a private, non-profit educational foundation in Bedford, Virginia that seeks to preserve the lessons and legacy of D-Day, June 6, 1944.

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I work as the Education Coordinator for the National D-Day Memorial planning a variety of family-friendly programs for students of all ages. It is my passion to present history in a way that is fun and engaging.